WARDOGS Trust Score: The Planned 2027 System

Status checked against BULKHEAD's public statements on 2026-11-12. Everything on this page describes a plan, not a shipped feature.

Quick answer

WARDOGS Trust Score is a reputation mechanic that BULKHEAD has described as planned for 2027. It is not in the game today. There is no menu to open, no number to look up and no penalty you can receive from it in the current Season 03 build. If you see a site or a video claiming to show your live Trust Score, treat it as unverified until BULKHEAD ships the system.

What exists is a design outline, given in the studio's own podcast. The outline is short and specific: a credit-like score starting at 100, thresholds that server owners and the developer could set, a small list of ways to add trust, and the possibility of using score loss as an alternative to a straight ban. Everything else, including how points would actually be removed, is still unannounced.

Confirmed outline versus open questions

The distinction matters because a plan can change before release. A threshold that sounds strict in a podcast may be softened after testing, and a system announced two years ahead can be renamed or folded into something else.

Starting at 100 and the three kinds of server

The plan begins every account at 100. From that baseline, the stated idea is that a score could move up through the routes below and, in the future, down through rules that have not been published.

Because both server owners and the developer could set a minimum, the same player could meet the bar on one server and fail it on another. That produces the three categories BULKHEAD described:

• High-trust servers: a strict minimum, aimed at players who have enabled hardware checks or completed verification.
• Low-trust servers: a lower minimum, so newer or unverified accounts can still join.
• No-requirement servers: the threshold feature is switched off, and the score does not gate entry at all.

For players, that means the score is less a global rank than a key that different hosts can choose to demand. It also means the practical effect of the system depends entirely on how many server owners decide to use it, which no one can predict before launch.

The three ways a score could rise

BULKHEAD listed three trust signals, and they are not equivalent in effort or in privacy cost.

1. TPM enabled. The Trusted Platform Module is a chip or firmware feature on modern motherboards. Turning it on is a firmware setting, not a game setting, and it can interact with disk encryption and dual-boot setups.
2. Secure Boot enabled. Secure Boot checks that the boot chain is signed. It is a firmware setting too, and some Linux dual-boot configurations need extra work before it will boot.
3. PlaySafe ID verification. This is the identity route. BULKHEAD stated that the process receives a verification token rather than an ID document, so the game does not hold a scan of your passport or licence.

The first two are hardware posture. The third is identity. Treating them as one ladder is a design choice: a player who refuses identity checks can still reach a high score through firmware alone, according to the outline.

Verification is targeted, not universal

The most misreported part of the plan is the claim that WARDOGS will require every player to verify their identity. BULKHEAD has said the opposite. Verification would not be mandatory across the whole player base.

What was described is narrower: accounts already flagged as suspicious would be asked to enable verification. That is a targeted requirement attached to a flag, not a gate on the whole audience. The flag itself is the weak point in the explanation, because the signals that produce it have not been published, and an unexplained flag combined with a verification demand is exactly the shape of system that generates appeals.

Lower scores instead of bans

BULKHEAD has raised the idea that a reduced score could one day replace an outright ban. The logic is that a player who is not clearly cheating but is persistently disruptive could lose access to trusted servers instead of losing the account.

This is the least defined part of the plan. No threshold, no decay rate, no recovery path and no start date have been given. It should be read as a direction of travel, not a policy you can plan around.

What this changes before 2027

Very little today, and that is the honest answer. You cannot raise a score that does not exist, and enabling TPM or Secure Boot purely for WARDOGS is a change with real side effects on encryption, updates and dual-boot systems.

A sensible order of operations is:

• Check whether TPM and Secure Boot are already on, since many modern prebuilt systems ship with them enabled.
• If you dual-boot Linux, confirm your bootloader still works before changing firmware settings.
• Keep your recovery key before touching disk encryption.
• Wait for BULKHEAD to publish the actual rules before changing anything else.

What BULKHEAD has not explained

The public outline leaves the operational half of the system missing. Not published as of 2026-11-12:

• Deduction rules. Which behaviours cost points, how many, and whether they decay.
• Score lookup. Where a player would see their own score, if anywhere.
• Cross-server sharing. Whether a score is global, regional or per-server.
• Appeal process. How a wrong flag or a wrong deduction would be reviewed.
• Threshold values. What counts as high or low trust in practice.
• Effect on matchmaking. Whether the score influences anything beyond server entry.

Until those appear, any specific number attached to the Trust Score is someone's guess.

Related guides

• WARDOGS anti-cheat explained
• The Hotzone Ep.2 notes
• How to report a player
• WARDOGS community servers
• WARDOGS known issues